TRIGGERnometry - March 03, 2021


Why I Left "Racially Hostile" Smith College - Jodi Shaw


Episode Stats

Length

58 minutes

Words per Minute

167.31058

Word Count

9,816

Sentence Count

434

Misogynist Sentences

4

Hate Speech Sentences

8


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kishin.
00:00:08.620 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.
00:00:14.160 Our brilliant guest today is a lifelong liberal who's just resigned from Smith College in the
00:00:18.620 United States, calling it a racially hostile environment. Jodie Shaw, welcome to Trigonometry.
00:00:24.240 Thank you so much for having me, Constantine and Francis.
00:00:26.800 It is great to have you on the show. I mentioned very briefly your story, but there'll be a lot
00:00:33.660 of people who might have heard about your case, but wouldn't necessarily know anything about you.
00:00:38.620 So why don't you give us a little background into who are you, how are you, where you are,
00:00:43.260 what has been the journey through life that leads you here sitting, talking to us?
00:00:49.160 Well, that's a lot since I'm almost 50 years old. Let me try to break it down for you.
00:00:53.960 Um, I am a lifelong liberal. That is true. And I actually graduated from Smith college in 1993.
00:01:03.920 And then I spent some time traveling and, you know, more of an artistic kind of person. And
00:01:12.440 then I became a professional musician. I lived in New York city for many years and then I had
00:01:18.660 children and life changed a bit. And I, you know, I needed a job that was, you know, not hustling
00:01:26.060 at 2am and hustling for money. So I decided to become a librarian and I was a children's librarian
00:01:34.060 for a couple of years. And then I moved out of the city. I wanted more space. And so that's what
00:01:39.580 brought me to Northampton originally, which is where Smith College is located. And I'd always
00:01:44.880 remembered Smith as this just really idyllic, amazing place. I mean, the town to Northampton,
00:01:53.060 just super liberal, like uber liberal. And I thought, wow, that would be a great place to
00:01:57.920 raise my kids. And, you know, it'll be just so wonderful. And I was overjoyed to land a position
00:02:06.280 in the Smith College libraries. Smith had always been like my secret dream place to work.
00:02:12.340 and so I started working in the libraries and while I was working there there was an incident
00:02:19.580 on campus about a year into my position it was I was in a temporary position but I was up for
00:02:25.240 a permanent position and then while I was there there was an incident and this incident it
00:02:32.020 involved a black student and a white custodian and the college's response to that really kind of
00:02:39.480 changed things in my mind on campus. And I've confirmed this with other people who've been at
00:02:44.440 Smith longer. It really, the college, even though the incident, the black student accused the white
00:02:52.340 custodian of engaging in racially motivated behavior against her. And the college immediately
00:02:59.120 sprung into action. She was eating lunch somewhere and the white person said,
00:03:03.260 you look out of place or something? Is that what happened? Yeah. Well, of course, there's a lot
00:03:07.960 more to the story. I mean, this was during the summer and this is a house on campus that students
00:03:14.660 are able to live on campus in the summer. But there's special, there's certain houses that
00:03:20.480 they live in and this was not one of them. And there's certain places where students are supposed
00:03:24.260 to eat and this house was not one of them. This house was actually being used as many houses are
00:03:29.540 on campus during the summer for another, an outside program. And this house in particular
00:03:35.880 was being used for a summer camp for young children, age five and over. And it wasn't
00:03:42.940 being used to house them. It was just being used to feed them. It was just like lunch, I think.
00:03:47.040 I'm not sure if it was breakfast too. So it was only being used for that purpose. And because it
00:03:52.460 was children using the house, all of the adults in the house also had background checks naturally.
00:03:59.080 And so clearly this was not the house where the student should have been eating. So that part of
00:04:04.360 the story really got lost at the time because it was touted as a common area on campus. And why am
00:04:11.600 I not allowed to be in a common area? And then the president came out and said, yeah, students are
00:04:15.420 allowed in all parts on campus. That's not technically true, not during the summer. And so
00:04:21.960 in spite of that fact, the student went into this house and the dining staff person who was working
00:04:29.160 there knew the student and said, oh, hey, you know, hey, so-and-so, I didn't know you were in
00:04:34.240 this camp. You know, they kind of said something because even before this, the staff are somewhat
00:04:39.800 reluctant to approach students to enforce rules because the college has demonstrated even prior
00:04:48.060 to this that they're kind of hesitant to back up the staff. So if the staff try to enforce a state
00:04:53.880 law, like you need to put shoes on in the dining room, sometimes that can backfire on them. And
00:04:59.420 the student will accuse them of engaging in abusive behavior or even racially motivated
00:05:03.520 behavior. So the staff are already a little tentative. So on this day, the student came in
00:05:08.120 and the staff member said, I didn't know you were in this house. And the student already didn't know
00:05:12.700 you were in this camp. And the student said, yeah, and flashed her ID. And the staff member
00:05:19.380 allowed her to eat there because the staff member didn't want to cause any conflict or problems.
00:05:24.720 And then the student took the food and went into the living room, which nobody was using,
00:05:30.180 not even the summer camp, and proceeded to lie down on a couch. And I think she was looking at
00:05:34.380 an iPad or something. A custodian in his 60s who has bad eyesight, and he wasn't wearing his
00:05:42.820 glasses at the time, looked through this door. I mean, there's so many details to this, which
00:05:48.480 the details alone, if you know them, plus combined with the investigative report, which was 170 pages
00:05:54.560 of documents, it really makes a hard, hard case for anyone to argue that this was racially
00:06:00.820 motivated. And these are staff, longtime staff members who have worked on a campus, which is
00:06:05.640 about half white and half students of color. They've worked with students of color, you know,
00:06:10.760 for years and years and years and years with no, like this person never had a problem before.
00:06:14.800 clearly this person was out of place this person was out of place was unexpected and so the staff
00:06:24.240 did what they were told which is if you see something no matter what it is if you feel like
00:06:29.740 something's out of place please call the campus police who are unarmed and that's what the
00:06:34.020 custodian did and the student later that evening and everything seemed fine the inter she videotaped
00:06:40.260 the interactions. The campus police officer who responded actually recognized her as a student,
00:06:46.180 you know, and it was a friendly exchange from what I can tell. And then, but later that night,
00:06:51.520 the student made a Facebook post. This Facebook post is what the college responded to. I mean,
00:06:57.600 the college really went overboard, profuse apologies, insinuating that it was a racial
00:07:04.040 incident before ever investigating any of the facts and putting into place all these, like
00:07:09.580 announcing its intention to put into place anti-bias training for staff, not for faculty,
00:07:15.340 for staff, and all these other programs and initiatives and committees and so on and so
00:07:20.560 forth. And this was all before they even did an investigation. And so even after the investigation
00:07:25.500 found there was clearly no evidence of racial bias, the college continued to uphold this narrative
00:07:32.920 that there was, there's horrible racism on Smith campus and we had, we need all these programs.
00:07:39.260 And, um, the tragedy, the real tragedy of this is, is one, it really, um, created a, uh, a real
00:07:47.060 rift between staff and students because now staff are very, they, they've seen what's happened and
00:07:53.340 they're very afraid because, because what happened was the student didn't know who called, she
00:07:58.240 couldn't identify the person who called campus, uh, police on her. And she was determined that
00:08:02.320 that individual being publicly named. And so she went through the campus directory and pulled out
00:08:09.280 two other people. One of them actually was the dining staff worker who allowed her to stay there.
00:08:13.780 She put her picture in her name and the picture in name of another custodian who wasn't even there
00:08:19.360 at the time on her Facebook page and said, here are the people who did this to me. And those people
00:08:26.180 really suffered material harm as a consequence. It's outlined in a New York Times article that
00:08:31.660 just came out yesterday, as did the responding police officer who was terminated eight months
00:08:36.560 later. Now, we don't know the exact conditions of his termination, but this is a longstanding
00:08:42.880 35-year employee with a spotless record, a beloved fixture of campus. And so when the staff,
00:08:51.000 the other staff see all this happening, this creates a hostile work environment.
00:08:56.820 So it's against this backdrop that individual acts of racism occurred to me.
00:09:05.640 So we already have a hostile work environment and it's very racially tense.
00:09:09.660 We created a tense environment at this point, not we, Smith College.
00:09:13.980 So that's where my story kind of unfolds.
00:09:17.900 It's like against all this context.
00:09:19.840 And that's why it's kind of a complicated story because, you know, in people, there was a rap
00:09:25.980 involved. There was a rap. I, you know, I'm a musician, as I explained, and I was tasked to do
00:09:34.180 a huge performance in front of an engaging orientation in front of 600 first year students.
00:09:40.480 It had to be wild and crazy. And how do you convey what is otherwise very boring information?
00:09:47.260 you do a rap obviously so so that's definitely what i would have done yeah isn't it right
00:09:55.160 so it was just obvious you know so um i worked on this rap for you for months i mean it's a huge
00:10:01.680 it's not just me doing a rap there's musicians and live musicians there's it's an event for 600
00:10:06.660 people in an auditorium there were sound people lights uh i needed the wi-fi repeaters and there
00:10:12.600 was so much logistics. And this incident happened around a month before my presentation was to take
00:10:20.320 place. And I was told less than a week before the presentation, you can't do the rap. And so I said,
00:10:26.560 well, why? Because you're white. And it might be viewed as cultural appropriation. And my supervisor
00:10:34.440 cited the incident between the student and the custodian as the reason. And remember,
00:10:40.040 This was before the investigation had started.
00:10:42.620 So that was the first thing that happened.
00:10:45.300 Jody, before you go any further with the story itself, which I really want to get into,
00:10:49.900 we started by introducing you as a self-described lifelong liberal.
00:10:54.160 And by the way, for our British audience in America, when they say liberal, generally
00:10:58.080 they mean left wing.
00:10:59.040 It's a sort of weird difference in language between the two countries.
00:11:02.160 But as a lifelong lefty, if we're a liberal lefty, if we might put it that way, did you
00:11:08.520 not agree automatically with this way of looking at things that as a white person, you shouldn't be
00:11:12.940 doing raps because it's cultural appropriation? Well, it's, that's, that's a good question. Um,
00:11:19.080 I, when I, when, you know, obviously my first year at Smith, they were talking about these
00:11:24.000 things. They were talking about systemic racism. They're talking about whiteness. And I was on
00:11:29.520 board and I thought, you know, I'm not an academic that, you know, they must know if
00:11:36.380 there's this thing called systemic racism, even though I'm not really clear on what that means,
00:11:41.200 or I can't really see any evidence of that. Like I understand what racist behavior is,
00:11:48.420 like observable acts of racism when somebody does something or denies somebody an opportunity
00:11:53.180 because of their race. Clearly I know what that is, but the systemic racism, I'm not
00:11:58.640 a little fuzzy on what that is. And the college didn't really explain it fully, but I trusted
00:12:03.920 them. I thought this is an elite institution. It's an academic institution. They must know.
00:12:09.640 And I was on board. And so even when this incident happened, I remember I sent an email
00:12:14.620 to somebody. I said, isn't this horrible? You know, this poor student who's just eating while
00:12:20.140 black. And so then, but then the incident happened to me with the rap. So where you can't do this
00:12:26.320 because you're white. And I was really confused because I thought clearly this counts as racial
00:12:33.140 discrimination. And yet it was done so unhesitatingly and, um, without any in memorialized
00:12:41.400 in an email and even went up to the Dean of libraries and she said, no, yeah, you can't do
00:12:44.800 this. I'm backing this up. And I thought, is this discrimination? I wasn't, I was like,
00:12:54.980 I wasn't sure. And then I thought maybe I'm a racist for thinking this is discriminate for
00:12:59.640 thinking discrimination against me based on my skin color is discrimination. It was really weird.
00:13:05.920 It was like this horrible turmoil in my head. And clearly it would have been such a coup for my
00:13:12.000 resume to pull this off in a successful manner in a way that was non-cringeworthy and very
00:13:20.200 unsuccessful, effective. And I wasn't able to do that. And I thought, well, should I report this?
00:13:27.560 Or, you know, and I ended up withdrawing from a job I was applying for because I just felt so bad about all of it.
00:13:35.340 And I didn't and I felt like, you know, I don't want to be in this environment like this feels very weird.
00:13:39.960 And I it felt it felt horrible and I felt humiliated, too, because I felt like, gee, am I racist because I thought to do this?
00:13:47.800 Like and now everybody knows how racist and like I'm culturally appropriating everything like now the whole campus knows.
00:13:54.200 And it was very confusing. And I thought for sure if I filed a complaint that I would never get hired at Smithcott, like I would never get a permanent job there because everybody would know that a white person had filed a complaint.
00:14:08.760 And so it was a horrible time for me and I agonized over it and I ended up just leaving the libraries and taking a different position.
00:14:19.100 And when I ended up, when more things happened and I ended up going to file a complaint, one of the first things I was asked by the officer who is in charge of compliance with the EEO, which is the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in the States.
00:14:36.640 it's like this um administrative procedure for ensuring compliance with i believe the civil
00:14:42.440 rights act like title six title seven title nine of the civil rights act when i went to her to talk
00:14:47.820 about filing complaint one of the first things she asked me was do you believe in white privilege
00:14:52.460 so that was um that was kind of like hmm my fears were founded like my my i'm not really supposed
00:15:01.620 to be doing this because i'm white and then she made other comments like the civil rights act was
00:15:06.460 created to protect traditionally marginalized groups of people and I interpreted that to mean
00:15:10.360 not me because I'm white and she said she didn't have experience in this area and I said what do
00:15:14.900 you mean and she said well because you're white so there were three those were three very clear
00:15:21.120 comments that told me I proceeded with the complaint but it was clear that there was there
00:15:29.120 were much different rules for me as a white person. And that's justified by this critical
00:15:36.700 theory, which posits that my position, because of my status that gets assigned to me as a white
00:15:43.980 person in society, I have too much power to ever truly be discriminated against or suffer
00:15:50.700 from discrimination.
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00:16:21.900 and jody i'm listening to this and i'm struggling to get my head around just how ridiculous this
00:16:31.540 all sounds but this kind of what was this like this when you started or was it a slow creep
00:16:37.780 where you know you know you start with things like you know diversity quotas blah blah blah
00:16:42.820 and then it went into avert well you're white therefore x y and z well i think it went into
00:16:49.760 hyper drive i think it was already kind of there and then it went to hyper drive after the july
00:16:54.320 34th after the incident between the black student the white custodian like the campus went into
00:16:58.980 overdrive with all these initiatives and programs and then and when was this jody what what so what
00:17:05.240 time and date was it as in what year was it all the rest of it so it was um 2018 oh wow okay like
00:17:13.060 from august 2018 and then during the time there until may 2020 we were in this kind of hyper drive
00:17:23.480 you know about race and whiteness and white privilege and then i filed my complaint in may
00:17:29.980 my final complaint in may 2020 good timing i know right and then as soon as i filed my complaint
00:17:39.420 George Floyd was murdered and BLM became very active and we were in the midst of a global
00:17:44.900 pandemic under when staff were told you might get furloughed.
00:17:48.820 And by the way, when we're making our financial decisions at, you know, one of our priorities
00:17:54.000 is our social justice education programs.
00:17:56.480 So it was, I mean, talk about hyperdrive.
00:18:01.700 It went to hyper, hyper, hyper, like hyper squared that summer.
00:18:06.300 So I filed this complaint and then it got worse. I mean, we were getting emails like I got an email from my director, like inviting just to the white people in the department, like I'm inviting all of us white people to meet to talk about how we can support our colleagues of color.
00:18:22.540 I got an email, I believe, from the president saying white people are especially responsible for dismantling racism or systemic racism.
00:18:32.360 Just more of the white, white, white, whiteness rhetoric.
00:18:36.440 And I started becoming a little more assertive or a little more aggressive at that point.
00:18:42.620 And I started sending emails and asking for definitions because clearly we were using different dictionaries at this point.
00:18:48.300 I, by this point, I well understood that my definition of racism was not consistent with Smith College's definition and nor was my definition of what I think of with equity and include or especially inclusion.
00:19:00.800 So I started asking for definitions and I wasn't able to get those.
00:19:04.560 Instead, I got like referred to Ibram X.
00:19:07.440 Kendi's book.
00:19:08.280 I got sent an essay called Me and White Supremacy.
00:19:13.940 It is one of my favorites as well.
00:19:17.180 It's a classic.
00:19:17.980 It's a nice balanced reading list.
00:19:19.640 It's what you want, a little bit of everything.
00:19:22.960 Yeah, it's a classic.
00:19:27.440 Yeah, so it just got worse.
00:19:28.780 I couldn't believe it.
00:19:29.600 I was like, oh my gosh, I just found this complaint.
00:19:32.340 And then it's just like, and so, yeah, it was a rough time to be a known, not agitator,
00:19:43.340 but a person within my department who started questioning this stuff in this climate was very
00:19:49.760 difficult. I can imagine. And then as it progressed, I read the letter that you wrote,
00:19:57.380 you said that your position became more and more untenable. Can you go into a little bit of what
00:20:02.700 that involved and how you were made to feel, etc.? Yeah, so there were some things that happened.
00:20:10.460 And it was a very, you have to understand more context.
00:20:15.040 Everything's about context, right?
00:20:16.340 And that's why simply reducing people to skin color makes no sense, because there's so much
00:20:22.140 context involved in life, right?
00:20:24.200 I mean, everything is context.
00:20:25.400 Absolutely.
00:20:25.900 You know, as comedians, everything's context.
00:20:28.500 So we were in the middle of a global pandemic.
00:20:32.300 So in March, we were all sent home.
00:20:36.020 We were all sent home.
00:20:37.620 We were all working suddenly remotely.
00:20:38.940 There were no processes, you know, all of these yearly processes, well-established communication
00:20:45.200 channels and workflows were completely interrupted and we had nothing.
00:20:49.660 We had to rebuild.
00:20:50.680 It was so very confusing.
00:20:52.240 Nobody knew what was going on.
00:20:53.500 We weren't sure if the college was going to, I mean, the students were sent home.
00:20:56.680 We were trying to get them home.
00:20:58.320 I mean, I was working at the residence life department at the time.
00:21:00.300 So like we were trying to get these students home and they couldn't get flights because
00:21:04.340 everything was shut down.
00:21:05.460 It was complete pandemonium.
00:21:07.800 And so during this summer, it got worse because the race stuff kept coming at us, even in spite of all this. I mean, I couldn't believe it. It was almost like that was the priority over all of this other mess that was happening, you know, through no fault of Smith that there was a global pandemic.
00:21:30.420 But I just couldn't believe that they were still pushing that this was the biggest priority.
00:21:36.500 And they issued this document called Toward Racial Justice at Smith, which then had further outlined further initiatives, including something about equity being tied to perform like pay.
00:21:51.760 It was like something about pay. We're going to be evaluating pay structures according to registers of identity.
00:21:57.580 and I thought well that sounds reasonable yeah I'm from the Soviet Union we tried it and it
00:22:03.600 worked out fantastically well you're from where from the Soviet Union that's where I was born
00:22:08.920 oh my gosh yeah wow I would love to hear about your experience there yeah uh well do you talk
00:22:18.100 about let's just let's just sum it up by saying we tried some something very similar and the results
00:22:23.800 were terrific uh so let's just um yeah you know from each according to his ability and to each
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00:24:36.420 yeah you know what you know you're handling it very well you know people won't realize this
00:24:43.880 But you are in the middle of a news storm right now.
00:24:47.320 There's articles about you.
00:24:49.420 People are talking about the issue.
00:24:51.460 And it seems like, you know, whatever comes out of this, you will hopefully be landing on your feet.
00:24:57.080 But I imagine it's not been easy.
00:24:59.360 And probably the time that you spend there, particularly before you decided to start speaking up, you would have felt a bit, you know, discombobulated, not a bit, a lot, discombobulated and sort of out of place.
00:25:11.160 And, you know, do I, I imagine that for someone like you, who's, who's had these liberal lefty
00:25:17.340 views your whole life, this must've been kind of shattering to your whole identity in some way.
00:25:24.420 Yeah, that's the thing. I mean, I did, I felt very alone. I mean, of course there was whispering
00:25:30.260 in hallways. I mean, I was not the only one feeling this, um, but nobody ever would talk
00:25:36.160 about it and allowed loud in a meeting, I felt very isolated. Um, and I felt you, you feel like
00:25:42.980 an orphan, like, like a political orphan really. And there was like a strong pull, um, not before
00:25:52.440 I made the video, but after I made the video from conserve really good people on the right. Um,
00:25:58.760 Um, and which, but I, and even a lot of people approached me and said, I used to be liberal,
00:26:06.000 now I'm on the right.
00:26:06.780 And the thing is like, I think it's, I made a decision early on to kind of stand my ground
00:26:11.380 that this is illiberal and this kind of behavior that's going on at Smith College is illiberal.
00:26:17.760 It is, it is a very dogmatic and rigid ideology and it's authoritarianism.
00:26:24.920 And I decided I'm, I'm a liberal.
00:26:27.860 I, you know, I, and when talking about policy, I very much am a liberal, like financial policy,
00:26:35.480 social policies, I'm a liberal. So I'm not going to get pushed out. I'm not going to get pushed
00:26:40.480 out of the left. I think this idea truly, this, this ideology needs to be put in its place. And
00:26:48.940 I think it's really important in the States, you know, we're so, I imagine there, there's well,
00:26:55.880 I think I know there as well. So polarized. And I think that it's almost a luxury to have
00:27:04.020 political ideals or to be still having policy debates in the face of authoritarianism.
00:27:13.980 When authoritarianism comes to town, no matter what side it comes from, like we know it came
00:27:19.400 from the left this time, it doesn't matter what side it came from. It's here now. It's here now.
00:27:25.880 And so it's like being able to still say, well, I'm a liberal, I'm on the right. It's almost like that's a luxury of a functioning democracy to be able to have those arguments. We're not even like talking about we're not even talking to each other anymore. We're not. I don't think we are a truly functioning democracy.
00:27:41.900 And I don't mean perfectly functioning, but I mean, I'm willing to set aside my strongly
00:27:49.780 held viewpoints on certain policy issues and social issues in order to band arms with people
00:27:57.440 and walk into this together, because it's going to take a lot of us, I think.
00:28:02.760 And so I don't know, I feel like it's important for us to try to, I think it's going to take
00:28:10.140 all of us and that's what this that's what authoritarianism does it makes especially people
00:28:15.840 on the left like so afraid of being aligned with the right or seen or but guilt by association
00:28:23.700 and i get that fear because so many on the left just immediately right like you off so
00:28:29.060 very early on after we made the video i went on tucker carlson and i don't know if you know
00:28:33.820 tucker carlson i've been on the show it was very helpful to my left-wing credentials
00:28:38.880 yes exactly so i mean you're mad the message doesn't change but you're seen with tucker and
00:28:45.120 it's like that that stuff really bothers me because i just think it's so it's so shallow
00:28:52.680 it feels so shallow to me but it's it's a reality um i know but that's part of how i think this
00:29:00.100 authoritarianism works i think it's like keeping us especially on the left i mean there's just so
00:29:07.140 much fear people on the right like they they know this has been going on for a long time a lot of
00:29:11.860 them are like i i saw this 10 years ago and and or like people like you who've come from uh you know
00:29:18.280 communist regimes um really i've had a lot of contact with with people like you constantin who
00:29:26.480 are like holy like alarm bells alarm bells alarm bells and um it's really the people on the left
00:29:34.100 that, uh, need to, they need to, I don't know, we need to get some moral courage here, folks.
00:29:41.520 We really need to, I don't know, it doesn't have to be making a video like I did, but
00:29:47.620 we got to do something because this is consuming us and, um, it can, it, it's consumed Smith
00:29:57.420 college and it made my life really, really difficult. It's, it's very hard. There's a
00:30:04.720 special kind of psychic damage that occurs when you're living in this kind of working in this
00:30:10.600 kind of environment in which you're lying to yourself. And because you have to, because if
00:30:15.300 you don't, it's, it's like, you have to convince yourself that it's okay. It's like a paramorality.
00:30:20.340 um and it it's that that's not only damaging to yourself but it kind of it disables something in
00:30:28.860 us it undermines this morality in us that we need to connect with others authentically and i think
00:30:36.340 when we're not able to connect with others authentically when we get dehumanized which
00:30:40.560 i think is what's happening or we dehumanize others then we're capable of doing very bad
00:30:45.580 things to each other that's a very very powerful point because you use that you see the words that
00:30:51.280 people use against people you know not only like you but against us and people who think differently
00:30:56.180 and it is dehumanizing one thing that I really want to ask is why has the universities and
00:31:03.380 particularly the universities in America provided such rich fertile soil for this kind of nonsense
00:31:09.680 um i think it's where this i don't know you know there's a lot of theories about that i'm not i'm
00:31:17.600 not an academic but i think michelle foucault has something to do with it they keep saying that
00:31:23.820 that that's what i've heard um and i even heard somebody said you know it was just a just a kind
00:31:29.720 of he developed this whole other moral universe to kind of justify his lifestyle basically which
00:31:36.380 is kind of this, uh, I get the sense that it was somewhat hedonistic, uh, lifestyle, like everything's
00:31:43.360 relative and, you know, there's no absolutes or no objective truth. And therefore there's no morale
00:31:49.800 and real morality. It's everything subjective. Um, which is astonishing. I mean, if that's true
00:31:56.160 that somebody, you know, who just simply justifying a lifestyle of like not really having
00:32:03.480 any objective morals has now spread rampantly throughout society. But as far as why, you know,
00:32:11.620 the colleges, I mean, I don't know, you'd have to ask an academic about that. Like the Marxist,
00:32:17.180 cultural Marxism, racist struggle as opposed to class struggle, all that.
00:32:22.600 Yeah. Well, we've talked about that plenty on the show, but it's interesting. I didn't know
00:32:26.460 anything about Foucault's personal life, but it sort of makes sense now. I'm not cheating on you,
00:32:30.880 darling it's just an alternative lifestyle it is right like is this bad is this good we don't know
00:32:37.140 we don't know and let's not ask any questions yeah let's just carry on and make dinner please
00:32:41.560 she's the third one this month anyway monogamy is a power is is oppressive exactly and and yeah
00:32:48.740 i couldn't agree with you more there all of a sudden but um but listen let me ask you this
00:32:54.700 because i think this is a question that some of your detractors might be keen to hear and i wanted
00:32:59.660 to give you a chance to address it
00:33:01.180 in a non-hostile environment.
00:33:04.480 Because, look, there's a lot of people who are like you,
00:33:09.680 who are in institutions which have become
00:33:12.060 completely captured by this mindset,
00:33:14.660 who are constantly hearing about toxic whiteness,
00:33:17.840 toxic masculinity, all this sort of stuff,
00:33:20.160 but they don't speak out.
00:33:21.280 And it strikes me that you've been quite bold
00:33:24.320 and courageous in speaking out against it.
00:33:27.180 Have you been radicalized into this somehow?
00:33:29.500 Have you been secretly watching, I don't know, Jordan Peterson on the sly or whatever it is that people apparently get radical?
00:33:38.500 How did you summon up the fortitude to start actually taking action on this?
00:33:47.180 Jordan Peterson was involved.
00:33:50.200 Boom.
00:33:51.020 No, I mean, I became interested.
00:33:53.080 I don't know how I became interested in Jordan Peterson, but I haven't listened to him that much.
00:33:57.280 It was a few years ago.
00:33:58.520 he said something that really struck me about not lying, about telling the truth and about how much
00:34:04.720 it hurts when you don't tell the truth, how much damage you cause to yourself. And I thought, I
00:34:08.860 think because I was really hurting, I think this was when I was hurting at Smith. And I thought,
00:34:13.200 I think that's why I'm hurt. I think it's because I'm lying to myself. Like I'm not.
00:34:20.080 And so, yeah, I did watch some Jordan Peterson and I did start seeking out alternative
00:34:26.080 viewpoints because that part is, I think that part's critical because remember when I, when
00:34:35.880 they say, Oh, you can't do the rap. I was like, is this discrimination? I don't know. Am I racist?
00:34:39.620 Like, because you get told, like, if you resist this, these ideas, then, then somehow you're,
00:34:44.840 that's your white fragility. And that's, are you seeking to uphold the power structure,
00:34:50.580 which is white supremacist? So in other words, it's a form of racism, right? It's, you're doing
00:34:55.000 something bad. And so like that little voice that tells you something's wrong, something's wrong.
00:34:59.500 You try to like squelch it and that's so damaging. And so I had to validate that myself in some way.
00:35:11.000 And I had to find like, know for sure that I'm not crazy and I'm not racist. And so in order to do
00:35:17.160 that, I had to kind of get outside the bubble a little bit and seek and go places where, oh my
00:35:23.340 god no good liberal supposed to go you know that's what i because i've been in this bubble telling me
00:35:27.100 oh my god like you can't that person's white supremacist and i found out wow jordan peterson's
00:35:32.100 not a sexist misogynistic person he's actually really good person and really thoughtful and
00:35:40.200 like he really thinks about this stuff a lot and he's very concerned and i that's when i started
00:35:47.020 When I started getting validated, then I started getting stronger and it still took me a long time to build up the courage.
00:35:56.240 And it also took some things happening to me at Smith where they really pushed me over the line and they made it unacceptable so that I had to file a complaint.
00:36:07.400 So it was a combination of those things.
00:36:09.080 And that's that's what I think we're really missing.
00:36:11.860 And I think what Helen Pluckrose is doing with Counterweight is so spot on because she provides a community because I think most people on the left, I'm talking mostly on the left or really anybody who they know something's wrong, but they're not really quite sure what it is because they're like, well, this is good, though.
00:36:32.780 This is, you know, I'm anti-racist and, you know, I'm seeking racial justice.
00:36:38.620 That's a good thing.
00:36:39.820 That's what I want.
00:36:40.560 I mean, there's very few people who would argue that that's not a good thing.
00:36:44.660 And yet something about it doesn't feel right, but they're not sure.
00:36:48.360 And they're told that that little voice is bad.
00:36:50.280 So then you try to push it away.
00:36:52.160 And I think the validation part, like being able to talk to other people and establish
00:36:56.600 that you're not crazy and racist and you're not alone is so critical to people building
00:37:02.360 up their moral courage.
00:37:03.940 And right now it's very hard to find each other.
00:37:07.120 We don't have any like places.
00:37:09.380 the, all of the, most of the institution has been captured on this, on the left for sure.
00:37:14.180 They've, they've all been, there's no, like aside from whispering in hallways, there's no like a
00:37:18.940 meeting ground. There's no third space. And so that's why what Helen's doing is so brilliant
00:37:23.740 because she has a community of people where you can go in and it takes a while. It's not just like
00:37:28.340 you talk to somebody once and you're like, oh, I knew, oh, okay. I'm not crazy. It's a process.
00:37:33.660 It's like a deprogramming, like there's stages.
00:37:39.420 And I still noticed even after I started making the videos, I still had some like thought
00:37:43.880 stuff going on, like this internal policing.
00:37:46.560 And I still have that a little bit like, I got to be careful what I'm saying.
00:37:51.760 And I can't decide if that was always there or if it's a result of this.
00:37:55.640 But I know that people need the validation and they need to know other people who are
00:38:02.040 liberal.
00:38:02.440 that's that's the other thing because there's no trust for anyone on the right they need it and
00:38:06.920 that's why i made very clear my first liberal my first video that i'm a lifelong liberal because
00:38:11.640 i wanted people to know that i am also a liberal if you're watching this and you're liberal and
00:38:16.840 this is this is not good and jody doesn't it doesn't it make you upset what's happened to the
00:38:23.920 left because i once considered myself to be on the left and you know the the fact like i was a
00:38:29.460 school teacher everybody who regularly watches it drinks you know I devoted 12 years of my life to
00:38:34.000 working with underprivileged kids that's what I did and the moment you come out and criticize you
00:38:39.660 know you're all right and you just think there's something deeply wrong with that political side
00:38:47.560 of the argument if this is what we're descending into yeah I know I'm really concerned I think
00:38:53.740 there's i think we've been way to cheer up me jesus christ i think there's this dehumanization
00:39:03.100 process like i said like where it's just totally okay to be i mean there's no there's such little
00:39:11.220 empathy involved because we're not focusing on individual people anymore now we see the danger
00:39:16.440 of moving away from the individual and categorizing people by groups because then they don't become
00:39:20.820 they kind of lose their humanity. They become like a herd or a mob instead of, instead of a
00:39:26.760 person. And then it becomes easy to just be mean and write them off and do things that have real
00:39:32.760 material consequences for their life, such as in the, what happened at Smith College on July 31st,
00:39:37.880 2018. Uh, it's, it, it really concerns me a lot. Um, and I think it concerns you guys a lot too.
00:39:46.680 you're right to be concerned because i know that you speak from personal experience about smith
00:39:51.680 college but actually what you're describing is in all probability happening on almost every college
00:39:57.260 campus in the united states and to some extent in the united kingdom and in many other parts of the
00:40:03.140 west so it's not an isolated incident this is one of the things that would be great for people
00:40:07.240 to take away from this conversation this isn't just the thing that happened to you this is
00:40:12.700 happening everywhere and at every college there's someone in your former position waiting to speak
00:40:17.880 out and you know you talk about people being encouraged and and emboldened by you know
00:40:23.100 understanding that they're not alone that's why we were so keen to have you on the show because I
00:40:28.200 think this won't end until people like you are given the opportunity to reach an audience and
00:40:35.740 the until people like you land on their feet because let's talk about the fact that you've
00:40:40.800 resigned uh and you refused their settlement which was requiring you to speak to stay silent
00:40:48.200 and not speak about this is that correct um they offered me a settlement yeah i mean
00:40:53.640 it's not unusual for a settlement to require a non-disclosure agreement sure and and why
00:41:01.420 would that be a sort of admission of culpability on their part to some extent or or not i don't
00:41:08.180 know. I don't know the legalities of that. I don't mean legally. I mean, do you think that
00:41:14.960 they were just, you were sort of a nuisance or they genuinely recognize that if you continue
00:41:19.400 to pursue your complaints, it would lead somewhere? I don't know. It's hard for me to speculate
00:41:25.180 because, I mean, any number of things could be happening. Like maybe they suspected I would
00:41:31.960 file a claim and they didn't want me to do that. They didn't want, just not because necessarily
00:41:37.060 they thought they would lose, but just because they didn't want to have the expense of that,
00:41:40.700 or maybe they don't want the publicity anymore. I mean, there's any, no, why didn't you accept
00:41:45.560 the settlement? Cause you need money, right? Yeah, that was, that was really hard. Um,
00:41:54.080 a number, I talked to a lot of people that week, a number of factors went into my decision making.
00:42:00.600 And then it came down to a dream in the end. But I didn't want to be in a position where if somebody else at Smith College, for example, managed to screw up, went through the same process I did, or else something happened to them and they were forced to be public, that I would not be able to speak up and support them, even if I was no longer at the college.
00:42:26.540 I did not want to be in that position. Um, so that was one thing. I also,
00:42:33.920 I don't see a whole lot of other, um, complaints on the horizon. Um, there's a complaint in Nevada,
00:42:45.720 right? The state of Nevada right now, Gabrielle Clark is suing a charter school, her and her son
00:42:50.340 for a similar, similar stuff. Um, she's actually black and her son is, is half black, but he has
00:42:56.460 blue blonde hair and blue eyes. So, um, he was made to talk about his white privilege, I believe.
00:43:04.080 Fuck me. Yeah. Um, so she's suing, she's very brave. She's standing up and she's suing the
00:43:11.780 school. And I, I'm just was concerned that if I disappear, I mean, this is how, how they do it.
00:43:19.520 I mean, anytime somebody gets up, they, you know, somebody who has very little money like me or
00:43:24.840 anybody, you know, any other lower level worker. Um, it's like, I would, you know,
00:43:32.400 for not that much, I mean, in my case, well, I don't want to talk too much about the settlement
00:43:39.920 negotiations. Um, but if you can't talk about something, then you, you can't do anything about
00:43:49.600 it. And even though I would be able to talk about it in general, I just felt like it was
00:43:53.080 really important that I be able to continue to speak out about Smith and that I not give up any
00:43:58.700 potential legal claims. Um, because I don't see, I had thought, I really thought about this. I
00:44:05.380 thought, well, maybe like other people will bring claims and I can just take the settlement and just
00:44:10.120 have, be comfortable and be okay. I mean, I was so exhausted by this point, like so incredibly
00:44:16.180 exhausted and it would have, it would have been so great. And I thought maybe other people will,
00:44:21.160 you know, fight this. And I was like, but what if they don't, you know, like I thought I'm going to
00:44:27.840 make this video and all these other people at Smith are going to stand up. Well, no, all the
00:44:32.560 people I'd been whispering to in the, in the hallways all disappeared. Like they evaporated.
00:44:37.500 And I thought, oh my gosh, they don't want to be associated with me. I thought I'm going to create
00:44:41.380 this movement at Smith college. And that didn't happen. And I mean, it happened more on a national
00:44:46.540 level, which was great. But I thought, geez, people are like, and I understand it. I was like,
00:44:55.000 this, this could be it. I mean, I don't know. I just didn't want to give up
00:45:01.720 in the end. And then I had a dream and I woke up and I thought, oh, I understand it's comfort or
00:45:09.080 freedom, the freedom to keep discussing this and possibly having no income and huge legal fees
00:45:17.600 or comfort, no legal fees and total comfort for a while. And I chose freedom and I made a video
00:45:29.760 about that. I really stepped off a cliff because I had no idea. I knew I had some support already
00:45:35.680 from the video. And I thought, well, surely people will, will help me fund this. But I didn't know if
00:45:41.180 they would. And so I was taking a huge leap of faith and I was, it was kind of very Jordan
00:45:45.760 Peterson-esque, like just tell the truth and trust, just do the right thing and trust that
00:45:52.060 it will work out. And so that's really what happened. And so far, so good. So far, so good.
00:46:01.200 And what advice, Jodi, would you give to people who are in a similar situation to you?
00:46:05.680 who are experiencing the same things, who have got their own struggles with this?
00:46:11.220 Yeah, I think I say the first thing to do is find at least one other person. And maybe you
00:46:18.420 already have one other person. So if you have one other person that you can talk to about this,
00:46:23.060 honestly, honestly, and that gets it, and that you can continue to talk to on a regular basis
00:46:29.140 to work it out, because you're going to have doubts. They creep back in. You're like,
00:46:33.620 well, maybe I am racist or maybe I like, you got to work that stuff out. It takes a while.
00:46:38.680 And then if you already have one person, find one other person. And now you have a group.
00:46:43.300 Now you have three people and then you need some kind of infrastructure. Um, so like a Facebook
00:46:48.520 page or, you know, private one, um, or a discord server, even better. Cause that's more private
00:46:53.340 some way to gather more people. And I, I, I've said this before and I realized what I'm,
00:46:59.540 And what I'm actually giving the blueprint for is a grassroots movement.
00:47:03.620 But I think on a person, so that's more of a broader political thing or a broader
00:47:08.340 mobilization.
00:47:09.720 But on a personal level, I think it's really important to have somebody you can talk to
00:47:13.580 about this because otherwise it will, if you are alone dealing with this in your head,
00:47:18.120 it is, it is, it can drive you crazy.
00:47:22.380 It can really, that's my experience.
00:47:25.920 And that's my experience talking to other people who are struggling with this too.
00:47:28.740 that it's just relentless physical symptoms can't sleep it's just it it's just really
00:47:36.360 and i've been reading about people from the soviet union too like um i actually posted a
00:47:42.680 quote that it drove some people crazy and some people committed suicide is that well when it
00:47:49.160 was true and uh actually the other thing is and i'm sure they'll start doing this in the west as
00:47:54.800 soon as they possibly can. They would put people into mental institutions for challenging
00:47:59.120 the Soviet narrative. So if you don't subscribe to the idea that, you know, you're racist, well,
00:48:06.200 that's a sign of mental illness. Let's stick you in a mental hospital. And, you know, as I say,
00:48:11.020 I'm sure we'll get there very soon. Thanks, mate. Yeah. Well, you'll be the first one in there,
00:48:16.580 mate, with my support, frankly. But, you know, it's a weird one. But you talk about the Soviet
00:48:23.900 you know, and you mentioned Jordan Peterson, this is one of the things that he often quotes
00:48:27.320 when he's talking about the importance of telling the truth. He's actually quoting Solzhenitsyn,
00:48:32.160 who talked about the fact that every time you tell a lie, a part of you dies.
00:48:38.520 Yeah. Yeah.
00:48:40.580 And every time you listen to a lie and you don't challenge it, a part of you dies. And very quickly,
00:48:47.220 if everyone does that, you very quickly end up in a society where everyone is lying to each other
00:48:51.920 all the time. And I think I'm sensing that that is really what you came up against your own
00:48:57.440 unwillingness to lie repeatedly over and over. Yeah. Some, yeah. Sometimes I think it's,
00:49:04.660 there were many times when I thought I was defective. Like there are many, you know,
00:49:08.900 my mom was like, I don't understand it. Like nobody else has a problem with it. Just go along
00:49:13.520 with it, you know? And I don't know what it is about me that I think maybe it's my artistic
00:49:19.780 background or, uh, you know, and I'm an introvert and I don't know, but I do think other people
00:49:26.580 feel it. I don't think it's just me. Um, they do feel it. Yeah. I think they feel it. Yeah.
00:49:32.780 Yeah. Of course they do. And that's why people watch, you know, they watch our show and they go,
00:49:37.140 thank you for keeping me sane this last year, because for many people, it's the only place
00:49:41.500 they get to hear a different, a different set of views that are based much more in facts and
00:49:46.340 statistics and research and whatever and you can have a sensible conversation about is there racism
00:49:53.080 is there structural inequality and and there is some truth to all of these things there is a kernel
00:49:58.720 of truth that has now been inflated into a larger thing that has taken on a life of its own and as
00:50:05.840 you said it makes it difficult to have actual conversations about the actual issue when you're
00:50:11.740 forced to subscribe to these completely false narratives broadway's smash hit the neil diamond
00:50:17.360 musical a beautiful noise is coming to toronto the true story of a kid from brooklyn destined
00:50:23.340 for something more featuring all the songs you love including america forever in blue jeans and
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00:50:35.120 musical a beautiful noise april 28th through june 7th 2026 the princess of wales theater
00:50:41.620 Yes, which then makes it impossible to address the issue, to address the problems when you cannot talk about the problems in an honest manner.
00:50:56.640 um part of the problem in talking to each other is that this ideology uh is is that we
00:51:08.020 we have certain tools that we use in western society it's called enlightenment values that
00:51:14.840 we use to determine what is true you know we have logic reason evidence the scientific method you
00:51:21.740 know we have agreed it's kind of implicitly as a society that we're going to use these tools and
00:51:26.580 So when we talk to each other, we say, well, I think this and here's why.
00:51:31.380 Here's my evidence and here's my argument.
00:51:33.580 And the other person says, well, this is what I disagree with you and here's why.
00:51:36.720 And then you assess each other's arguments based on the evidence and the logic and the
00:51:41.640 reason, right?
00:51:42.960 Well, this ideology would have us believe that those tools in and of themselves are
00:51:51.220 tools of white supremacy and therefore are not valid.
00:51:54.780 and so that makes it impossible for us to even have a converse to even determine we're not even
00:52:03.440 using the same tools so let alone have this using the same definitions of words that's already gone
00:52:09.380 too but if we cannot even agree on what tools we're going to use to have the discussions then
00:52:14.560 we can't have a discussion at all um and then you know you immediately get written off based on who
00:52:19.940 you are you know like oh i i didn't like that book well why not because the author is x color
00:52:24.940 and has no right right writing it it's like well what about the book like was it good you know
00:52:29.840 so that's that's the problem that's that's a major problem i see in keeping us from uh being able to
00:52:38.120 talk about things and as you know that's how we make social progress we we talk it's into
00:52:42.280 intellectual freedom and in freedom of speech and jody are there any regrets for the course
00:52:51.060 of action that you took is there not a part of you that looks back at your former life where
00:52:54.980 you unfortunately had to keep your mouth shut but you were at least comfortable etc etc
00:52:59.460 you mean is there a time in my life where i kept my mouth shut and was comfortable
00:53:03.620 comfortable or no do you is there part of you that regrets standing up for what oh what you
00:53:11.620 believed in no no in fact uh although i had some doubts when i made the video
00:53:21.740 uh there was a big huge sense of relief i thought i'm out i mean it must feel like
00:53:30.100 people i mean i think about um you know my a relative of mine was a gay man and he
00:53:39.100 was not out for most of his life you know older and he came out when he was close to 70
00:53:48.140 and he lived you know life he had a wife and
00:53:51.060 and he was so happy when he came out and I just think wow like all those years I mean he didn't
00:53:59.200 talk about it but I thought that must have been really tough and um so I think as with anyone
00:54:08.540 living a, who's living a lie or lying, trying, trying to lie themselves or convince themselves
00:54:13.740 that they're not actually what they really are. There's a huge relief in finally admitting that
00:54:18.940 and being very public about it. Like, this is who I am. Like, and then letting the chips fall
00:54:24.100 and, and yeah. And for me, it really was a decision of, um,
00:54:31.320 the damage that was being caught that I was feeling by not saying anything became greater
00:54:37.980 than what i imagined the potential damage would be from coming out and so was there not a small
00:54:44.200 moment just before you were about to publish a video where you thought if i cross a rubicon
00:54:50.860 i can't remember to be honest with you um no i was pretty determined by that point
00:55:01.480 i was like kind of a lot has happened since then uh jody listen before we ask you our last question
00:55:07.540 uh, tell everybody how they can, where they can follow you online, if they can support you in any
00:55:13.120 way. Uh, we really would like people to show, uh, the support and keep in touch with you and follow
00:55:18.660 what you're doing. Oh yeah. Um, so I have a website where I'm now collecting everything. It's
00:55:23.580 jodyshaw.net, jodyshaw.net. And then of course there's the GoFundMe, which is now over the
00:55:32.040 amount I had originally hoped to collect and anything extra, let's keep it going because
00:55:38.000 that those are going into an escrow or trust. I'm not sure I need to talk to a lawyer, but
00:55:42.840 to help other people who are in these kinds of environments. And I want to give them a better
00:55:51.700 choice than signing the NDA for like, you know, a little comfort versus being able to take legal
00:55:58.140 action or keep talking about it. I just want to give people a better choice than that. And I think
00:56:01.960 that's a big barrier to people standing up is they don't have money for a lawyer. Um, so it's,
00:56:06.980 it's legal fees for people that want to do that. So that's just GoFundMe. It's like help Jody with
00:56:11.520 living, legal and living expenses, but it says on there what over one 50 is going to go to,
00:56:16.560 um, we'll put the link in the description, uh, which leads us to our final question,
00:56:22.000 Jody, which is what do you think is the one thing that we as a society are not talking about that
00:56:27.160 we actually should be? Oh, um, I feel like I'm supposed to come up with something really
00:56:36.480 brilliant here. And I just, you are shoot. No. Okay. No, the best move for you in this situation
00:56:44.280 would be just to be with a straight face, go toxic whiteness. I think we should be talking
00:56:51.120 about, I'm going to go with the honest route. I think we need to be concerning ourselves very
00:56:57.900 quickly with developing some mental health tools to, if this thing turns around, which I hope it
00:57:05.820 will, and if it doesn't even, but we're going to need some help because there's going to be a lot
00:57:11.900 of mental health issues, I think, unfortunately, from this kind of thing. And I'm really worried
00:57:18.100 about that for people um and also i think we should be talking more about how middle-aged
00:57:24.560 white women are perfectly capable of doing a very amazing rap
00:57:30.680 we'll get that to the top of the agenda someday
00:57:35.900 jody uh thanks for coming on the show yeah and yeah thank you for watching guys uh please check
00:57:43.460 out our episodes they always go out on wednesday and sunday 7 p.m uk time and most importantly go
00:57:49.520 follow jody online and support her fundraiser we'll see you again very soon take care good night
00:57:54.740 We'll be right back.
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